Japan

The imperial imperative

It's a boy, at last

THE news on September 6th that a baby boy had been born into Japan's imperial household for the first time in over 40 years was greeted with relief by a government that had just avoided a constitutional crisis—and with joy by demographers and shopkeepers. The Dai-Ichi Life Institute predicts a mini baby-boom that will produce a bumper crop of potential wives for the little chap, and a welcome ¥150 billion ($1.3 billion) boost to the economy.

The as yet unnamed boy, born to Princess Kiko, wife of Emperor Akihito's second son, is third in line to the throne, after the crown prince, 46-year-old Naruhito, and his own father, Prince Akishino, Naruhito's younger brother. The Chrysanthemum Throne is remarkable on several counts. Not only, at 2,600 years, is Japan's easily the world's oldest monarchy, but it also boasts an unbroken male lineage (though eight women have over time stood in as caretaker empresses). What is more, historians of the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) can affirm, the lineage is descended from Amaterasu, the sun goddess born not by Caesarean section, as was the latest little tyke, but from an eye of the god Izanagi.

Yet the boy can expect little of the fun—snowboarding at Verbier, lines of cocaine, teenage romps with first cousins—enjoyed by European royals. The imperial family's treatment would anywhere else count as cruel and unusual punishment. The impenetrable IHA has almost absolute power over the imperial family. The 42-year-old crown princess, Masako, educated at Harvard and Oxford and formerly a high-flyer at the Foreign Ministry, was confined like a factory-farmed animal, forbidden from taking foreign trips with her husband lest this get in the way of reproduction. Though she gave birth to a girl, now four, the pressure from the IHA to produce a male heir contributed to a nervous breakdown, from which she has not fully recovered. Strains between her husband and Prince Akishino seemed to have arisen when Prince Naruhito hinted in public at his anger with the IHA. In other words, Princess Kiko, who is 39, with daughters who are 14 and 11, may have felt pressure to lie back and think of Japan. At any rate, the IHA took no risks; she was whisked to hospital three weeks before the child was due.

The birth comes as a relief to Shinzo Abe, who is expected to take over from Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister at the end of this month. Earlier this year Mr Abe, as the government's chief cabinet secretary, pushed through a bill that allowed for female succession. Though championed by Mr Koizumi, it was anathema to Mr Abe, whose conservative credentials risked being undermined. But then news of Princess Kiko's pregnancy leaked out, and the bill was hurriedly shelved, at least for now.